35 comments on “FIA confirms DRS zone details for Japan”

With the fast corner and the chicane before the DRS zone, I think Vettel will be seen to pull away from the guy behind before they have a chance to get close enough to pass at the front.
But it might be good enough to help keep the field close and allow more lunges at other parts of the track to boost the action, as I remember the past couple of races here rather for admiring how great a track it is and the weather then seeing a tight race.

same here.. there hasn’t been anything really exciting at Japan in the not-so-distant past.. (excluding ’06)

I’m pretty sure that the 130R is taken flat, so the RB shouldn’t gain any advantage through that.. plus the chicane relies on mechanical grip and the RB isn’t quite as dominant in that area.. will be interesting to see though!

Yeah, but if they put the detection point on the other side of the Triangle, then there wouldn’t be enough space for a full DRS zone, because the activation point would probably come somewhere after the start line.

And there isn’t anywhere else that the zone could really go. The run from Denger to the hairpin is too short.

I know it would have been dangerous but what about round R130, watched Alonso’s pass of Schumi from a few years ago this morning and it is seat of your pants watching but would have been good to see some risks.

@browny@sams Yea, I would imagine it would be quite dangerous around 130R. I would have expected to hear something about it from the FIA, like banning it during FP and qualifying but clearly they’re not as bothered about it as I am ;)

Loving how you’re comparing real life to a game lol. They may say F1 2011 is a simulation but it is far from simulating the G-forces or mechanical grip of an F1 Car.

and to answer your question – it’ll be far to dangerous to take 130R flat as the imbalance in air outflow from the car would cause far too much turbulence and could through a car into multiple spins at those speeds

@BasCB well I read somewhere (I don’t remember exactly) having no aero-help in fast turns as 130R can provoke an accident like the one Webber had in Monza, I’m sure it can be exciting to try it but we could see problems in minor teams as Team Lotus if they push it too much

@ECWDanSelby From memory, DRS seems to work quite well coming out of a slow chicane. I appreciate that there is the nice open turn before the start/finish straight at Suzuka but it may just be enough to ensure that DRS is effective in how you say it should be.

It’s very very ambiguous as F1 cars take turn 1 flat at suzuka, hence no breaking – and as we all know breaking de-activates DRS zones, or so it has for all the races this year. I can’t think of any other way they can de-activate the DRS.

You cannot ask the drivers to de-activate at a certain point – everyone will vary and it’ll just get messy, nor can you put in a system which will flip the rear wing back to its position. The detection point simply allows the driver to activate the button – not the wing – would really like to see how this pans out during the race..

Turn one, or the second half of it represents a significant braking zone for turn two. With the DRS open the back end of the cars could step out resulting in a significantly high speed spin.

All of this comes under the “potentially” banner however I think considering the chance of cars digging in should they go sideways into the gravel is enough of a deterrent for the FIA to want to avoid it.

Keeping in mind that when the DRS is active it can often be as a car tries to pass, usually this means the cars is being driven on the edge anyway.

I’d have rather seen the DRS zone up the back straight towards 130R, but I think this is the second best option in my opinion.

I would have thought it would have been after the hairpin with the detection zone before that. But then they would be carrying so much speed into 130R we could have seen a few shunts. Here’s hoping it works well.

I think this is the best place to put the DRS zone. I just don’t see how it could work well anywhere else. I can’t wait to see DRS open for 130r during qualifying. I know that corner isn’t the challenge it once was (as it seems with quite a few of the “classic” corners these days) but DRS might make things more exciting :D

Ya that’s what I thought he meant, but distance between the cars makes no difference to the time gap.
This is a pretty obvious concept so maybe I’m missing something. If the cars are travelling at 200kph a gap of 1 second would be roughly 60m where as if the cars enter the chicane and go to a 20kph crawl a gap of 1 second would mean a distance of 6m between the cars.

Meaning that if the cars are exactly equal the time gap should remain equal at all parts of the track.

Definitely cars that are good on high speed bends will have an advantage though.. in that they will be able to stretch the time gap to the car behind to >1s just at the DRS zone. They could also possibly get within the 1s gap of the car infront. the car behind can then close the gap at slower parts of the track but the DRS advantage has done the damage.

@Fer no.65 Ya I see what you’re saying.. Car No.1 can accelerate away while car No.2 is still rounding the bend.

But, if both cars pass the start/finish line excatly 1s apart and they both take precisely 1 min to reach the DRS activation surely car No.2 will reach the activation point exactly 1m 1s from when car No.1 crossed the start/finish line?

Good decision. Turn 1 will test the drivers’ guts, as it’s possible they can still be side by side before the much tighter Turn 2. I think we’ll actually see a DRS zone that will separate the men from the boys.

I hope the straight is short enough for the driver behind to get alongside, not just sail past. But it’s hard to get excited about DRS passes there, if the memory of Kimi doing it round the outside in 2005 is still fresh in your mind…

I want to see if Schumacher still domains the “S” turns as he used to do, well, this kind of turns normally favour Vettel, so in a couple of laps he can have the time gap which avoid other pilots to chase him using DRS (I’m talking as if he had already got the pole)